Fair Trade Judaica (FTJ)

Fair Trade Judaica promotes fair trade as a Jewish value through educating the Jewish community, and expanding the production, distribution, and sale of fair trade Judaica products. We envision a world in which Jewish consumers recognize fair trade as an expression of core Jewish values, seek out fair trade Judaica products, and use their purchasing power to support thriving communities of artisans around the world.

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Tell Elite/Strauss to go Fair Trade for Passover

Fair Trade Judaica first raised the issue of fair trade chocolate, child labor and Pesach in the Jewish community in 2011, inspired/outraged by “The Dark Side of Chocolate” DVD. We launched a Fair Trade Kosher for Passover Petition encouraging a kosher chocolate company (in general) to begin sourcing fair trade cocoa beans, and received over 1,000 signatures in just a few months; you can find many comments here. While we have not yet been able to get a kosher company to go fair trade, we were able to get a Rabbinic ruling that Equal Exchange’s non-dairy chocolate was “Kosher for Passover”, so we could finally eat child slave labor free chocolate on Pesach.

Just a few months ago we were lucky to connect with Ashira Abramowitz, a young woman, living in Israel, who was so inspired by this issue that she dedicated her Bat Mitzvah to encouraging The Strauss Group who produces Elite chocolate, to start sourcing fair trade cocoa beans. Fair Trade Judaica is excited to support Ashira’s project – Please read her statement below, sign her petition on change.org, and tell Elite that you want fair trade Kosher for Passover chocolate!

Ashira’s Statement

Every year when we have our Passover seders we remember that we were slaves and then we were free. Is this just a history lesson? An excuse to have a weird party? To me, the important purpose of Passover is to remember our own slavery so that we can have empathy for the people who still suffer under the oppression of others. My name is Ashira . I am 12 years old and I just had my bat mitzvah. Other kids my age, and even younger, are slaves. The irony is that their slavery produces chocolate, which gives lucky kids like me treats. Israel is a Jewish state and as such we should never, ever profit or reap enjoyment from other people’s suffering. So I call on the biggest chocolate company in Israel, Strauss, to only sell fair trade chocolate starting by Passover. Please sign the petition – not to boycott Strauss, but to call on them to go 100% Fair Trade by Passover.

Fair Trade Judaica's website would never have happened without three extraordinary people:Lisa K. Chanoff, whose generous donation made the project possible,Dean MacDonald who captured our essence with his brilliant logo and artistic influence, andAaron Hodge Silver who took our ideas and built a website we can grow into for a long time to come.